The task of a power plant monitoring system is to detect faults and avoid damages to the power plant that might be caused by these faults. This is typically achieved by monitoring the sensor vector. Each sensor vector generally includes a set of sensors that reflect the performance of the power plant. When the power plant works normally, the sensor vector should be located inside a normal operating region. When the sensor vector deviates much from this region, a fault might occur and an alarm may be activated. Most prior art monitoring systems address how to train a statistical model based on a set of sensors, but few attempted differentiating the types of sensors based on their correlation.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method of monitoring a power plant by differentiating between different types of sensors. What is also needed is a method of monitoring a power plant by monitoring those sensors that are out-of-range. What is also needed is a method of monitoring a power plant using expected values for those sensors that it is possible to predict the operating values for other sensors and detecting faults in those sensors.